Cuba at stake: a special report

Hello, hivers. Today I bring you a deep dive into the Cuban political situation. I start from the election last April 19 of the President of the Republic by the National Assembly of People's Power, which, for comparative purposes, is the name given to the institution of Congress or Parliament in Cuba. Politics here is not very much given to surprise in this kind of event, and I had already told you that the highest representative figure of the State power would be ratified in his position, as happened. We understand that democracy, in general, is a game in which there is uncertainty, and yet, in Cuba, it works sometimes under remote control. Why does the system operate in this way? Could it do otherwise?

To the second question, I answer in principle that yes, the Cuban system still has a lot of room for democracy, and I agree that a good part of what happened last Tuesday has a protocol character. How the process is implemented —not necessarily its design— is not a good deal to defend the democratic or dynamic character of an electoral system, too committed to the mission of projecting unity. This concept, necessary for reasons I will explain below, can and must contain social diversity or most of it, though the power itself has been a brake for this way of doing politics to take hold.

But anyone could answer no to the same question, which implies elaborating on the first question. The current Cuban political system cannot be understood without its nemesis, represented by successive U.S. administrations from Eisenhower to Biden. I think it would be unfair to fail to recognize this. It is no coincidence that the date to constitute Parliament here was April 19, corresponding to another anniversary of the defeat at the Bay of Pigs of a CIA-sponsored invasion in 1961, cooked up during Dwight's tenure and served by a hesitant Kennedy. Let us expand a bit on this thesis below.

The American Shadow

The Cuban Revolution was routed into the Soviet orbit essentially moved by American aggression, and the latter's sustainment since then has been a plausible argument at least to defend a group of positions and decisions, including the establishment of a single-party model and the 1976 electoral system, as modified by the 2019 Constitution. Could there be a predisposition to a curtailed/mutilated democracy on the part of the Cuban historical rulers? Yes. But I insist that there is a space of confrontation that legitimizes a narrative of defense and sacrifice of freedoms. I, in particular, don´t have to and in fact, don´t agree with how all political activity is conducted in Cuba. Still, I do care that the right of this country to decide on its destiny without interference or external pressures is respected.

Take a look at the economic aspect of this matter, where, in a nutshell, everything is defined. The U.S. government imposes on the Island an unparalleled regime of sanctions on trade and finances, where everything is prohibited as a rule, with a few exceptions such as the purchase of agricultural products, with the proviso in this case that it be done without granting direct credits to the country or paying in advance —with cash— the amount of the operation. We know that the volume of trade in the world under these conditions is extremely marginal.

But even this would not be a problem if in the same legislation where the U.S. Congress allowed —in the year 2000— this complicated dynamic for the purchase of food (which in any case is through which we supply ourselves with products that right now are critical in the popular diet such as chicken meat), it had not eliminated the executive prerogative to allow U.S. tourism in Cuba, the only country where the legislative power there prohibits this practice to its citizens. In other words, a path was opened to the same extent that a natural and historical source of liquidity, such as the U.S. visitor, was closed.

Not to mention the relentless persecution of transactions related to this nation around the world —which cannot operate freely with the U.S. dollar even in the U-Turn modality—, where a simple license "erroneously" granted by Microsoft can lead the latter to the obligation of paying a fine to OFAC (which reminds me that nothing has changed since John McCone, the head of the CIA back in the days of the Missile Crisis, always inquired whether the agency was doing enough on a global scale to torpedo any commercial operation of interest to Cuba). If you want to read the critical core of the U.S. sanctions regime, I refer you to the Cuban Assets Control Regulations administered by the Treasury Department.

Then there is the problem of a regime change policy aimed at subverting the internal socio-political climate in a patient and aggregate manner, paid for by Congress with US$ 20 million every year. As a colleague recently observed to me, theoretically we are talking about more than 1 million dollars per Cuban. Here, agencies such as USAID or the State Department itself deploy a very different strategy from that applied in most of the countries where they carry out foreign policy operations, with a high level of secrecy, bordering on a classified nature which, beyond the fact that it is not declared, it is in practice. The funds are directed to strategic activities in the field of the media, and capacity building in certain social and specifically political actors (individuals, organizations, communities) to "energize" Cuban civil society with the tunes of Washington's taste.

This picture that I paint in a few paragraphs, but that could take us many Hive resources to show in all its colors, must be kept in mind for any serious evaluation of Cuba. We are not talking about a conflict with the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Italy, or France, but with the United States. However, although it is impossible to avoid the variable of U.S. policy, my analysis below points to the challenges the country faces from its internal strengths, problems, and differences.

Political Zoom

The Cuban political system is based on the implementation of a representative democracy, where indirect election mechanisms are privileged, especially in the definition of the most relevant positions. But the latter is not a Cuban problem by design, because there are many countries in which there are even fewer processes of direct democracy regulated by law than in Cuba. I am talking about facts and comparative political science, not rhetoric. If you will, I dare to say that this Island would qualify with relative ease in the top 10 countries with higher levels of direct democracy in the last five years (between referendums to approve the Constitution in 2019, a new Code to regulate family life in 2022, and two previous popular consultations in both cases).

My fellow citizens have a rather naive idyllic dream with the direct election of the President of the Republic, but democracy is not defined in a day when we elect the president for the next four or five years, but in regular participation, with concrete impact, in decision-making at all levels. This is where this country can make progress, but in any of the nations from which you read me right now, there are debts with democratic development.

The potential to involve Cuban citizens in every step of the electoral process is still enormous, even guaranteeing more instances where the population nominates and votes candidates directly or at least have a more active voice, starting from the local space, but even touching the nerves of the central government. This would not imply a risk for power and instead contributes to enlivening the democratic spirit, in a sort of steroid for socio-political consensus.

There is also the opportunity to institute moments for more effective accountability, in which Cubans can truly become power through their ability to decisively censure the activity of their rulers. This is another dynamic that is very difficult to install, I warn, anywhere in the world. There is a very interesting vignette at the end of the final chapter of the "Game of Thrones" series that is an accurate and precise nod to this problem of universal and historical democratic development.

But in the same vein of accountability, it would be closer —theoretically speaking— to guarantee its effectiveness as a process in the practical realization of institutions such as the Cuban Parliament, where I would like government officials to be subjected to a real level of pressure, where the scalpel cuts the skin to look inside, on the part of the representatives of the people. This is instead of the complacency and the lukewarm clothes with which the bureaucracy is usually treated, especially at a time of so much social tension due to the acute crisis that is being experienced here.

It seems to me that as far as democracy is concerned, these are the fastest ways to advance in its growth. I see the other great challenge in the management of internal political differences. This is a multifaceted issue, which invariably involves the United States. The U.S. policy enunciated above vitiates the opening of more spaces for legitimate discussion about the course of society. Period.

Nevertheless, I believe that even under these circumstances the Cuban State must improve that management. And so is the effective separation of local actors who contribute to implementing the U.S. regime change strategy —whom I reprove, although I will always promote the appropriate legal treatment instead of extrajudicial repression, which detracts from the aesthetics of politics—, from those who have "pure" dissident positions. The power has to learn to coexist with the latter, even when they express themselves through the punishment vote or electoral abstention, totally new experiences in the Cuban political sphere. What is at stake here, and what worries me deeply, is the unstoppable decline in the popular capacity to discern, to block the inflamed and false rhetoric —come from wherever it comes—, and to acquire robust positions and criteria on the state of things (though this is a global problem right now).

Brief economic commentary

The design of an efficient economic policy is a handicap in a land of underdevelopment, as Cuba is, especially if it is a Marxist bet —which always seems to go against the innate impulses of human beings as producers and consumers of goods—, which, moreover, is resisting a persistent attempt of suffocation on the part of the world's major power. But even nominally under these budgets, a better performance can be obtained, one that will take the country out of a period that has become too long of shortages of all basic products (food, hygiene, energy, and fuel in recent months), a natural cause of serious and socially costly inflationary processes.

The planning of the economy has been erratic, and largely ineffective, with ill-timed decisions, others ill-conceived, and those that have not yet arrived. In my opinion, the factors that have had the greatest impact on state policy are the incapacity to produce a solid movement to incentives national production, the lack of investment in food production, poor strategical foresight in critical sectors such as energy, the hesitant nature of allowing the expansion of the private sector, and the management of the state monopoly on commercial imports. All this in a context where tourism, the main locomotive of the national economy, has not been able to recover to pre-pandemic levels —unlike competing markets in the region—.

Now the landing of foreign businesses is being encouraged to boost domestic wholesale and retail trade. But what has just been approved goes hand in hand with the former, as an indirect solution to the voracious inflation, when I am convinced that if the entry into the market of retail operators is made more flexible, the contribution to that end would be faster and more comprehensive, although insufficient.

Final Commentary

Cuba is at a complex crossroads, marked by a distancing of the citizenry from the political position that was the majority since 1959, born of an economic crisis that both the general public and academia debate whether or not it is more severe than the one experienced after the collapse of the USSR (it seems to me that it is not). U.S. policy is a common factor in explaining this dynamic, but independently of this it is possible and more than necessary to expand democratic channels to strengthen social consensus, and to ensure, even under the socio-economic principles included in the current Constitution, better returns from private sector activity and foreign investment to recover consumption capacity more quickly. Here I end this installment in which I have tried to introduce the current Cuban problem mainly from the political point of view, awaiting your doubts and comments to enrich the collective knowledge. Have a nice day.